The devil whispered in my ear while I was practising...

Jazzaferri

You want to play like Givoine or one of the other speed demons

Spend 2-4 years 8-12 hours a day 7 days a week and you will be there.

I am focused at the moment on sax speed goal .. To be able to play arps and scales at 300 bpm

Not there yet but that is what it takes. That way when I play more slowly it seems easy

The problem with being older and developing the ability to play really fast is the real danger of RSI

One needs to be really careful. 3 years ago after two weeks in Florida playing 7-10 hours a day on the way back in the airplane I went to get my guitar out of the overhead and my left arm got up to shoulder height and fell back to hang.

It took several months to get it back working properly from acute aubchromial bursitis caused by ..... Yes you guessed it. That along with having my teeth fixed is why I went back to sax for most of my lead work.

Lango-Django

I don't want to give everyone here a false idea about Givone, he isn't really what you'd call a speed demon, but his arps and passages can be intricate and complicated, and you soon find out that it takes very nimble fingers to be able to play 'em at full tempo.

So far, knock wood, I haven't had any problems with RSI, perhaps due to the fact that practising a few hours a day is about all that I'm able to get away with and still keep up with real life.

And if it's true what you say, jazzaferri, about the number of hours/years required to develop those real high speed chops well, I guess it's not a very realistic goal for me to set for myself, because I'm 99% sure that I'm really never going to practise [i]that[/i] strenuously.

Luckily, for me, that's not a real problem; though of course I'd love to be able to play a real barn-burner like "Shine" at the same amazing tempo as Andreas Oberg--- who wouldn't?---- I'm still quite happy playing some of my favourite standards by Gershwin, Kern and Rodgers at medium tempos... and the fact that at this stage of my life, I can finally manage to play along with some of my favourite Django solos at 75% to 85% speed, well, that to me is a source of real joy and pride.

By the way, my nomination for the slowest and seemingly easiest Django solo of all time is "Hot Lips", has anybody ever tried that one?

I haven't yet, but it's medium tempo and to my ear he seems to play it mostly in thirds and fourths.

Jazzaferri

Something I need to remind myself on regularly is that it is the journey hat is important not here you end up.

In the end we all end up just low level vibrations in the earth mother :shock:

Elliot

Lango-Django wrote:

See, the thing with me is that I always worry about my ability to ever play fast enough because I am a lefthander who plays guitar the normal righthanded way.

Will

Me too!